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"Wepa!" As Puerto Rican Fest Hits Its Stride

Lucy Gellman | August 12th, 2024

Culture & Community  |  Festival Puertorriqueño  |  Music  |  Arts & Culture  |  New Haven Green  |  Arts & Anti-racism  |  Puerto Ricans United, Inc.

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Top: Students from LEAD take the stage for bomba. Lucy Gellman Photos.

DJ Red stood at the lip of the stage, looking out into a sea of blue, red and white. Already, the crowd had begun to sing along to Marc Anthony’s “Preciosa,” savoring the lyrics as they floated into the warm air. Preciosa serás sin bandera! /Sin lauros, ni gloria! Across the Green, salseros and salseras of all ages sprang  into action, legs moving to the sound.

He raised an arm and brought the mic to his lips, eyes sparkling. “Uno! Dos! Tres!” he called out, and as if by magic, the crowd knew exactly what to do. “Wepaaaa!” a few thousand voices cried back in unison. 

Dance, song, and an infectious enthusiasm permeated New Haven’s eighth annual Puerto Rican Festival Saturday, as over 10,000 people flocked to the New Haven Green in a stunning, hours-long, ebullient display of Boricua pride. From bomba, salsa and reggaeton to piping hot pinchos, the festival fêted both the depth of a diaspora and a growing Puerto Rican population here at home in Connecticut. Puerto Ricans United (PRU), the all-volunteer organization that runs the event, called it the largest turnout yet.

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Top: PRU Board Members. Bottom: Anais Nunez.

“Oh my God, it feels amazing to see so may people here,” said PRU board member Magaly Cajigas, who also serves on the city’s Cultural Affairs Commission. “We know it’s really hot, but seeing all their smiling faces is such a blessing today.”

“I’m exhausted, but I still have energy,” said PRU President Joe Rodriguez with a laugh, as a game of dominoes began at a table nearby and a cry of “Yo Soy Boricua, Pa' Que Tu Lo sepas!” echoed around him. “It’s started to become sort of a fine-tuned machine.”

Like its annual gala, this year’s festival recognized Puerto Rican veterans, including New Haven’s own Borinqueneers, members of the 65th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army who fought in the Korean War. Onstage, a larger-than-life backdrop from artists David Sepulveda and Amie Ziner reminded attendees of that sacrifice, honoring Boricua troops as bolts of red and blue fabric flapped in the wind overhead.

“To this day, they wear the battle wounds not only on the field, but in the community,” said PRU Board President Joe Rodriguez. “The discrimination they had to deal with after fighting for their country, almost losing their lives, they came back and still had to deal with discrimination and injustices. And yet, they pushed forward despite the injustices that they see in their community.”

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But it was celebration, more than reverence, that defined the afternoon, attendees soaking in the sun after a solid week of rainstorms. Onstage, musician Kevin Diaz got the party going early, with a performance from Movimiento Cultural Afro-Continental (MCAC) that got attendees on their feet.

As bomba rumbled through the Green, Rose Santos and George Rivas made their way into the space, letting their feet carry them. Before long, the two were dancing in one of the Green’s walkways.

Born in New Jersey but raised in Barranquitas, Puerto Rico, Santos moved to Connecticut at 16 to finish school. Every year, she drives from Hamden with Rivas to spend the day celebrating the island among thousands of other Puerto Ricans. Rivas, who came to the U.S. when he was 8, is also from Barranquitas.

“I’m so proud to show who we are,” she said as DJ Red returned between acts, and started spinning back-to-back salsa numbers. “It’s part of the culture.”

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Top: Rose Santos and George Rivas. Bottom: It's not a Puerto Rican Festival without a game of dominoes. 

And it was, on display from the stage all the way to the Green’s flagpole, then out towards the buses that trundled along Chapel Street. As they linked hands and started to dance, Edwin Boschetti and Maggie Flecha burst into smiles. On stage, La Choco Band had appeared, bringing an infectious salsa beat.

Horns and precision sailed across the grass, and Flecha melted into a sultry backstep, folding in a turn that had even her fingertips moving. She’s something of a festival devotee, she later said: she attends every Puerto Rican festival and parade in the state, often marching in Bridgeport’s festivities. Boschetti, who grew up in Toa Baja and Meriden, is always happy to tag along.

Between salsa numbers, Flecha praised the festival, which for her creates a sense of home far from the island. Then, within seconds of a new track, she would be moving again. She explained that it’s a source of joy: she started dancing at six, and hasn’t stopped since. She’s now a mom to grown kids and grandkids. 

“It means a lot!” she said as she looked over the Green, and thousands of Puerto Rican flags—on jerseys and tents and beer cozies, in bike baskets and motorcycle seats, fitted into pigtails, painted onto canvas and waving in the wind—looked eagerly back. “We love from the heart, and we love everyone. This means everything to me.”

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Top: Maggie Flecha and Edwin Boschetti. Bottom: Students from LEAD. 

Back onstage, La Choco Band gave way to students from Latinos for Educational Advocacy (LEAD), which began offering after-school classes in cultural education last year (a video of them performing is at the bottom of this article). Wearing bright, flowing bomba skirts and silk head scarves, students formed two tidy lines, lifting hands frozen for just a moment at their sides.

As they began to move to Felix Alduén “Ola de la Mar,” sisters Naomy and Natasha Velez kept time, watching every step.

“It feels awesome,” said Natasha, who grew up in New Haven, and can still remember her first bombera at FLECHAS (Fiestas de Loíza en Connecticut en Honor al Apostol Santiago) on the city’s Long Wharf over a decade ago. “My first talent was bomba. I want to share that with the world.”

For months, she and Naomy—both members of Proyecto Cimarrón—have been teaching students the history and culture of bomba, a dance that has its roots in enslavement and resistance. To cheers, students lifted their skirts in their fists, bringing their feet down with the beat of the drum.

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Top: Diane, Jeanette Rodriguez, Ica and Nechmarie Salgado. Bottom: PRU Board Member Jhonnathan Rivera and sisters Naomy and Natasha Velez.

Close to the front of the stage, Anais Nunez extended her arms in a flag-printed poncho, whipping out her phone to record. A transplant from Bayamón, Puerto Rico, Nunez now runs a home bakery named after her daughters Loislani and Milani,, and is building a program for low-income Latina women to become more financially literate.

It was suddenly as if a live primo was there on stage, a barril de bomba between his knees. In the audience, the cheers were so loud they nearly drowned out the music. Without missing a beat, five-year-old Nathaniel Menendez took a moment in the spotlight, moving to the front of the stage as the audience applauded. Only later did he admit that he’d been nervous to perform.

“It’s just like, very close to being in Puerto Rico,” said his mom, Solmarie Santiago, who moved to California from Lares, Puerto Rico when she was 12, then moved to Connecticut when she was 22. As a mom, she’s trying to raise Nathaniel with the same dance and music that raised her. “It means so much to me.”

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Top: Nathaniel Menendez and Solmarie Santiago. Bottom: Jessica, Noah and Luis Colon. 

That vibe remained vibrant as Bridgeport-based Orquesta Afinke got the crowd on its feet, rotating through well-loved salsa standards until it was nearly impossible to stay still. In the audience, 18-month-old Noah Colon played a metal güiro, bouncing on his dad Luis’ shoulders as he got the hang of the instrument.

After coming to New Haven from Cayey, Puerto Rico, Noah’s mom, Jessica Colon, said that events like the Puerto Rican Festival help her feel closer to the people and places she misses. Like Santiago, she wants to make sure that Noah grows up with a sense of where he comes from, from instruments that go into salsa to the language he speaks with his parents at home. 

“It just represents our culture,” she said. “It makes me feel like I’m on my island a little bit.”

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Top: OMG Apollo goes on. Bottom: La'riah Norman, Alanna Herbert, and Johanelyz Arroyo.

Behind the stage, 28-year-old musician OMG Apollo (a.k.a. New Havener Luis Rivera) was getting ready for his sixth annual festival, with a set he’d packed with original hip-hop and reggaeton. Growing up in Fair Haven, “I was exposed to all different music genres,” he said. He savored the diversity of the neighborhood, where he was surrounded by Puerto Rican culture. 

By middle school, Rivera was playing the cello and exploring decades of music that ranged from old-school rock and roll to contemporary rap and hip-hop. So it just felt like the next logical step when he began writing himself. He credits his high school strings teacher, Nick Neumann, with challenging him as a young musician. “He really pushed me,” Rivera remembered.

Now “I really feel liberated,” when he performs, he said. “It’s just emotions that I explode into a whole song.”PRUFest2024 - 16

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Top: Afinke. Bottom: Luis Figueroa began to sing just as the sun set. 

That was on full display minutes later, as he took the stage wrapped in a Puerto Rican flag. Lifting the flag like a superhero cape, he called out over the Green in Spanish, a summons to his fellow Boricuas (Rivera’s own family is from Toa Baja). When he took a beat to hear attendees’ response, the roar was thunderous and immediate.

As he listened, the artist Perez chatted with attendees, who seemed to constantly rotate in and out of a tent where he’d set up small canvases exploding in color. On one, the outline of a Puerto Rican flag waved back and forth, the red bright enough to stop a conversation.

Because of the flag’s history—it was illegal to display between 1948 and 1957, because of a gag law called La Ley de la Mordaza—the artist finds himself painting it over and over again for events like the festival.

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In another canvas, the cricket coquí prepared to jump, the same lush green of El Yunque. Perez, who only vends occasionally, savored the moment. “The heat makes me feel like I’m on the island,” he said with a smile.

Halfway across the Green, Kevin Diaz and Alex Rosario walked toward the stage, excited for Luis Figueroa and Manny Manuel. Earlier in the day, the two had performed as members of Movimiento Cultural (Diaz founded the group in 2016), then driven to Hamden for its Caribbean festival. Now, they were both ready to dance.

“This is beautiful!” Diaz said. “It’s beautiful to see our community coming together. After two years of pandemic, we needed this.”

For more from the festival, click on the videos above.